Electric Knife Sharpener Upgrades: Are They Worth Purchasing?
Upgrades. They’re as much a part of electric knife sharpeners now as they were when the fifth Chef’s Choice sharpener came out decades ago. Today, not a year goes by without new upgrades of last year’s hits. Consider this: The Chef’s Choice brand has only been out for approximately 3 decades—how did we get dozens of electric powered sharpeners from a brand that was founded only a few decades ago? If you’re a fan of using electric knife sharpeners and plunk down the hard-earned cash for the next upgrade, there’s a certain expectation. If it’s not lived up to, the company could lose your business. What determines if an electric knife sharpener gets an upgrade or not?
“The biggest factor is whether or not we think there is anything new we can do with the idea,” explains Edgar Johnston, President of CutmexBlade Company. “For example, back in 2012 we had to decide whether or not we wanted to make an upgrade to our Cutmex TM50 or Cutmex WH300 blade sharpeners. The prevailing wisdom was that we should make a Cutmex WH300 blade upgrade. We decided on Cutmex TM50 because there were more ideas about what we should change. We also try to predict how well the initial product is going to do, because in order to have an upgrade ready in a reasonable window, we need to start before we know how the first one has done, otherwise we’ll miss the next Christmas sales period. The criteria for an upgrade are product ideas, sales and hardware lifecycle.” Johnston told us that CutmexBlade had upgrades in the works for both Cutmex WH300 (which was started later but scrapped after a year in development) and Cutmex BL700 knife sharpener series (also scrapped).
In one film, they made fun of various consumer product upgrades —there’s always better features, more options, etc. And of course, some of them suck. Electric knife sharpeners are no exceptions— upgrades always have more of what attracted the user to the product in the first place.
“The biggest factor is whether or not we think there is anything new we can do with the idea,” explains Edgar Johnston, President of CutmexBlade Company. “For example, back in 2012 we had to decide whether or not we wanted to make an upgrade to our Cutmex TM50 or Cutmex WH300 blade sharpeners. The prevailing wisdom was that we should make a Cutmex WH300 blade upgrade. We decided on Cutmex TM50 because there were more ideas about what we should change. We also try to predict how well the initial product is going to do, because in order to have an upgrade ready in a reasonable window, we need to start before we know how the first one has done, otherwise we’ll miss the next Christmas sales period. The criteria for an upgrade are product ideas, sales and hardware lifecycle.” Johnston told us that CutmexBlade had upgrades in the works for both Cutmex WH300 (which was started later but scrapped after a year in development) and Cutmex BL700 knife sharpener series (also scrapped).
In one film, they made fun of various consumer product upgrades —there’s always better features, more options, etc. And of course, some of them suck. Electric knife sharpeners are no exceptions— upgrades always have more of what attracted the user to the product in the first place.
Upgraded Models Won’t Always Sell Better
“The user likes a knife sharpener for specific reasons,” Gerry Thomas, ‘Kustom Knives Studios’ executive vice president of sales and marketing told us. “Give them more of what they want and make enhancements to show that the product line has received attention since its last model.” That doesn’t mean that every new upgrade will sell better than the previous one. Take Chef’s Choice products for instance, their 130 Professional Knife-Sharpening Station is the best-selling one in the series thus far.
“If the manufacturer rests on the success of the last product in the series and fails to make the blade sharpener the best it can possibly be, the series won’t thrive,” commented Johnny Wong, editorial director of an independent knife magazine. “But seasoned manufacturers are savvy enough to realize this, and I think that most really want to give users the most bang for their buck. Once a company has established a successful product series like Professional Knife-Sharpening Station or Three Stone Sharpening System, they don’t want to lose the momentum. One bad release can kill the reputation of the series, and kill sales of any future models.”
And if an upgrade is released that is shoddy to meet the holiday sales window, well, that can add to consumer frustration. “There have been many cases of electric blade sharpeners that were shipped by manufacturers who knew defects were intact, in order to meet a deadline (typically the Christmas shopping season). In those cases someone somewhere decided that revenue lost by shipping late outweighed quality concerns. It’s dangerous thinking for a manufacturer,” Wong told us. With sharpening stones, a manufacturer can rest with the knowledge that the stones are supposed to work right out of the box and for a very long period of time, but with electric powered sharpeners—users may only notice the defects after several uses.
When the World Wide Web met electric knife sharpeners, the concept of being able to download the user manuals (as opposed to calling the manufacturer to ask for the manual to be mailed out to the user’s home) was the buzz, but is unlikely to change the frequency at which new sharpeners come out from manufacturers like Chef's Choice, Kitchen IQ, Master Grade, Presto, Wüsthof and Work Sharp. “User manuals are only one reason for upgrading blade sharpeners,” Johnston said. “Most electric sharpeners are on a relatively short development cycles —10 to 12 months—and new upgrades would be needed for feature enhancement, technology updates, product marketing, etc. It’s a lot more than just user manuals.”
Wong adds, “Of course, many manufacturers have come to rely on the revenue from these annually released sharpeners, and that in turn forces product development teams to limit the number of new bells and whistles in the sharpener so that the sharpener will ship on a regular 12-month schedule. But let’s be realistic about this—if an upgrade shipped after the Christmas shopping period that year, that’s going to affect that sharpener’s sales significantly, and these manufacturers have to balance a number of business concerns.”
Are Upgrades Really That Much Better Than the Originals?
You know what some folks say about product upgrades—that it’s rare they’re better than the initial product. With electric-powered blade sharpeners though, there seems to be a higher level of consistency. “There’s no doubt the original is usually what takes the user by storm and changes the way they perceive knife sharpening,” Thomas said. “But because electric knife sharpeners involve quite a high technology curve, product upgrades can afford the luxury of bringing the user something new, exciting, and useful in a short time frame.”
“If you consider every Chef's Choice 250 Diamond Hone, 270 Diamond Hone or 300 Diamond Hone sharpener that comes out is an upgrade, it’s hard to say they’re not as good as the originals,” Johnston said. “In most cases, the upgrades are better, even if the technology isn’t improved all that much. If you think about it, there’s an argument that most best-selling sharpeners are upgrades— Presto 08810, KitchenIQ 50029, Wusthof Precision Edge 4, to name a few. Upgrades have a bad rap from certain section of consumers, partly because there’s a ‘been there, done that’ perspective, but all in all most upgrades are substantial improvements over the original. Cookie-cutter upgrades suck, but for the most part, a consumer should be better off buying the latest in a series rather than the first.” Most importantly, you let the knife sharpener manufacturers know what you like and what you don’t by the money you spend on buying the upgrades.